Alma Jr.

Alma 1

Mosiah was dead. He was, as we say, a fighter—not against the disease that took him, mind you, since that was a war we were far from understanding. But he fought moral decay, legislated with heart, even preached like a barnstorming evangelist. And, of course, some people always fought back. So if God ever earned a Purple Heart, Mosiah got to wear it. Which he did—on his sleeve.

No one could match his prowess as a king. So for the first time in quasi-Middle Eastern politics, the position was retired. And the country got handed over to men who came to define the term “activist judges.” The first of them was Alma Junior. (We’ll leave the “Junior” off in what ensues.)

In Alma’s first year as judge, the bailiff brought in a tall bodybuilder who’d turned preacher, but with a twist. He was an anti-gospel preacher. God’s word, he said, was the exact opposite of what people had been told all their lives. At least when it came to priesthood. Church hierarchy should be based on celebrity. And the most popular deserved to be coddled. It was rule by charisma.

As for doctrine, this was the essence: God will save everybody, conduct notwithstanding. So don’t mourn or regret.

It was obviously a winning message. People happily gave him money to keep preaching it. He started a church, became its figurehead, and started to dress like God himself, if God were into showing off with clothes.

One day, while preaching, he met Gideon—the one who had gotten Limhi’s people unslaved—and the two started to argue. Only Gideon had scripture to bolster his point of view. His incessant quoting of it enraged the anti-gospel preacher to the point he pulled a sword and swung it at Gideon, executing him gangland style. The horrified true church folks wrestled the preacher to the ground and dragged him to Alma.

The preacher, whose name was Nehor, pled for mercy. But that was like rubbing his hand the wrong way against Alma’s spiritual quills. No dice. Alma coined the term “priestcraft”—a take off on “witchcraft”—to define the preacher’s crimes. “You’ve not only done it for the first time in this land, but you’ve tried to enforce it with violence. If I let you get away with that, the whole culture would collapse. And if we let people like you kill good people, we’d bear your guilt too. Which, despite your preposterous teaching, would actually condemn us to hell. So here’s my judgment: capital punishment for your stunt—not the bad preaching, mind you. That we can put up with if we have to. But not the murder.”

Bureaucracy had not yet begun to curdle the judicial system. And appeals were unheard of. So after the verdict a crowd hustled Nehor to Manti Hill, where they made him recant, then, let’s just say, killed him in the most humiliating way possible. (I’ll leave that to your imagination.)

But preaching was big business in a church-state society. If you could make money and get famous by spouting a new message, you’d be tempted. Many people yielded. Spiritual novelty always sells.

And there was a legal snafu. Free speech was okay so long as you didn’t lie about your beliefs, because lying was illegal (just like theft and murder). So who knew what any preacher actually believed? In any case, actual belief in the Anointed One’s coming seemed to wane. People took sides, played games, shunned one another, even beat one another, all in the name of “truth.”

As you might guess, the anti-behaviorist post-Nehorites got the better of the fight. True church folks were meek, or tried to be. And they thought taking money for teaching stained the message.

Furthermore, it was a church rule not to attack non-church people, let alone fellow church people. But when debates cooked up, the debaters soon came to blows, church folks or not. Soon there weren’t enough unslapped cheeks to turn.

And this was only Alma’s second year in office. The whole scene—church+state—was already coming unglued. People’s attitudes froze up. Church leaders sliced infidels from the rolls. Some onlookers took offense and quit. A minority of zealots stayed true.

A strange symbiosis of preachers and hearers ensued: each savored the attention of the other. The playing field increasingly leveled, as teachers and learners united in common cause. Equality moved from a truism to a habit.

This was not only in ideology. It was in action. Everyone who had money shared it with the poor, sick, and vexed. Fashionable clothes went out of fashion. A new plain style took hold. This kind of solidarity led to peace. Outside forces had no effect.

But with unity and cooperative effort came abundance, whether in crops, livestock, precious metals, fabrics—you name the commodity, the people’s productivity soared. Their common ethic disallowed hunger, thirst, illness, or lack of clothing. Everyone got a piece of the pie, no matter their gender or social status. It was the headiest of times, with none of it going to peoples’ heads.

Non-church members strayed from their alter-egos’ ideals. They loved magic, primitivism, high fashion, doubletalk, egomania, prostitution, home invasions, on and on. Thankfully, laws, police, and judges kept the worst of it in check. Indeed, the Nephite system kept criminality tamped down for three more years.

But in the fifth year, more religious convulsion: